What do you think a good beginning should be like? What effects should it have over the Reader and what should it essentially possess and contain?
What do you think a good beginning should be like? What effects should it have over the Reader and what should it essentially possess and contain?
I think some books enter slowly in their subject :calm, wise, taking time beginnings
On the second hand you can make your first sentence like a punch line, a hooking debut
For example: "124 was spiteful." the short slamming debut of Beloved !
or, in a longer and original way : "She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise." It's Portnoy's Complaint, one of Philip Roth's greatest novels.
What you can see, it's that all the essence of those novels is contained in these first sentences, It have to say something on what you are going to tell us, or at least, It can be used to set a charachter, a place, a mood.
And, It have to sound good to you, you also should feel that you can follow on it.
It changes-how can one generalise?
'Gone with the Wind' had a vivid description of Scarlett by the first paragraph and then a dull conversation between two side characters that reveal her love for Ashley, the theme of the novel.
'Anna Karenina' had a fantastic line on marriage and life, starting with a vivid description of the infidelity of the brother of Anna and his family life, and of Anna mediating a reconciliation between the battling spouses.
'Shantaram' had a line about torture and blood and the human spirit before going on to describe a rather more normal landing of an escaped convict in India as a tourist for the first time.
'Midnight's children,' a beautiful line about Freedom at Midnight for India before describing a drop of blood falling from the nose of the MC's grandfather...
the answer being there is no single good beginning-no tried or tested formula. I am describing books whose beginnings made an impact-there must be a great number of books that made an impact whose beginnings did not.
Steam straight into the action. Introduce your protagonist early. A brief description of him/her and flesh out some details about the protagonist.